The Billion Dollar Don Nobody is Talking About

Mogilevich was born in Kiev's Podil neighborhood to a Jewish family.[12]

In 1968, at the age of 22, Mogilevich earned a degree in economics from Lviv University.[citation needed]

In the early 1970s, Mogilevich became part of the Lyuberetskaya crime group[why?] in Moscow and was involved in petty theft and fraud. He served two terms (3 and 4 years) for currency-dealing offenses.[13]

During the 1980s, tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian Jews were emigrating to Israel on short notice and without the ability to quickly transfer their possessions. Mogilevich would offer to sell property – their furniture, art and diamonds – on behalf of the prospective émigrés, promising to forward the money on to Israel. The money was, instead, used to invest in black market and criminal activities.[14] In 1990, already a millionaire, Mogilevich moved to Israel, together with several top lieutenants. Here he invested in a wide range of legal businesses, whilst continuing to operate a worldwide network of prostitution, weapon, and drug smuggling through a complex web of offshore companies.[15]

In 1991 Mogilevich married his Hungarian girlfriend Katalin Papp, moved to Hungary, and had three children with her, obtaining a Hungarian passport; at this point, Mogilevich held Russian, Ukrainian, Israeli and Hungarian citizenship. Living in a fortified villa outside Budapest, he continued to invest in a wide array of enterprises, including buying a local armament factory, "Army Co-Op", which produced anti-aircraft guns.[16]

In 1994, Mogilevich group obtained control over Inkombank, one of the largest private banks in Russia,[17] in a secret deal with bank chairman Vladimir Vinogradov, getting direct access to the world financial system. The bank collapsed in 1998 under suspicions of money laundering.[18] Through Inkombank, in 1996 he obtained a significant share in Sukhoi, a large military aircraft manufacturer.[citation needed]

In May 1995, a meeting in Prague between Mogilevich and Sergei Mikhailov, head of the Solntsevo group, was raided by Czech police. The occasion was a birthday party for one of the deputy Solntsevo mafiosi. Two hundred partygoers (including dozens of prostitutes) in the restaurant "U Holub&#367;" (owned by Mogilevich) were detained and thirty expelled from the country.[19] Police had been tipped off that the Solntsevo group intended to execute Mogilevich at the party[20] over a disputed payment of $5 million. But Mogilevich never showed and it is believed that a senior figure in the Czech police, working with the Russian mafia, had warned him.[21] Soon, however, the Czech Interior Ministry imposed a 10-year entry ban on Mogilevich, while the Hungarian government declared him persona non grata and the British barred his entry into the UK, declaring him "one of the most dangerous men in the world".[22]